During use of a mobile stretcher in a hospital, it is frequently necessary to transfer a patient from the stretcher to another stretcher (or a bed or X-ray table), or vice versa. In some cases, this is done by simply positioning the two stretchers side by side and then having several persons physically lift and slide the patient from one stretcher to the other. This is dangerous to the patient, because the patient may be dropped on the floor between the stretchers. Further, it is dangerous to hospital personnel, because it is a common source of serious back injuries.
Devices have been developed to facilitate patient transfers, but they are often special devices which are separate from a stretcher and which may be lost or at least not readily available when it is necessary to effect a patient transfer. Also, some devices require electricity from a wall outlet, and there may not always be a wall outlet handy when a patient transfer must be made. One known stretcher has an arrangement which can serve both as a side rail and as a patient transfer device, but it is relatively bulky and cumbersome to operate, and in particular cannot be easily moved into a transfer position once two stretcher have been placed in a side by side relationship unless the positions of the stretchers are physically jockeyed.
A related source of back injury for hospital personnel grows out of manually maneuvering stretchers. In particular, a person maneuvering a stretcher usually stands at one end of the stretcher. The typical stretcher has no handles at either end. Thus, to grasp the end of the bed, the person must lean over, which presents a risk of back injury. While it would be possible to use a conventional mechanism of the stretcher to raise the vertical height of the mattress support frame and thus the patient, this raises the center of gravity and thus reduces the stability of the stretcher, presents an increased risk of danger to the patient due to the added height, and also reduces the patient's sense of security.
On the other hand, most stretchers do have collapsible side rails located on each side of the mattress. When the side rail is in a raised position, it has a horizontally extending top rail and a number of spaced spindles which extend vertically downwardly from the top rail. The person who wishes to maneuver the stretcher can lean over the stretcher and grasp either an end spindle of each side rail or the top rail of each side rail. However, the vertical spindle and horizontal top rail are not convenient to grasp, which forces the person to lean farther than is desirable and thus increases the risk that a back injury may result while the stretcher is being maneuvered. Further, since it is customary for the person to stand at the end of the bed corresponding to the head of the patient, the person and the patient may breathe on each other while the person is leaning over the patient, and thus if either has an infectious disease it may be transferred to the other.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a patient transfer arrangement which is an integral part of a stretcher, which is compact, and which does not require electricity.
It is a further object of the invention to provide such a patient transfer arrangement which can be easily operated by one person, and which can be operated when two stretcher are in a side by side relationship without any need to jockey the positions of the stretchers.
It is a further object of the invention to provide an arrangement which makes it easy for a person to maneuver the stretcher while minimizing the extent to which the person must lean forwardly over the stretcher, in order to thereby reduce the risk of injury to such person.